How to Meal Plan – Part One – Healthy Tuesday #HealthyTuesday

I am by no means an expert when it comes to meal planning and grocery shopping. I am sure many of you are much better at it than I. But after leaving a very long comment when another blogger asked about meal planning, I decided I did at least have some curves and advice on it. Which is where the idea for this post came from – How to Meal Plan, as part of the Healthy Tuesday segments.

I never used to meal plan, at all. It has only been in the past year or a little more that I started it and I have to say I love it. I love having a base to go off and know what we’ll need at the grocery store. Knowing what we will most likely have each day helps so much come dinner time and the headache of saying, what in the world are we going to have tonight?

I am not the cook in the family. I do it here and there, but my husband is the main cook. I plan the meals, clean up, and grocery shop. I try my best to do some of the cooking so Jason doesn’t have to, try being the word here.

I find when we meal plan, we eat so much better than if we don’t. I am not sure if you find that too if you meal plan you eat better. It just seems to go together.

So here are my little tips and tricks on meal planning.

How to Meal Plan Part One

Decide how often you want to go grocery shopping

One of the most important first steps is to decide just how often you’d like to go regular grocery shopping. I am not talking about picking up this or that every now and then, but bulk grocery shopping where you can get most everything you need.

We tend to only go big grocery shopping once a month or so. This way we aren’t spending lots of time at the store. Especially when I really don’t like going by myself and have to drag Jason along with me usually.

How long will your meal plan be?

I do, personally, a two-week meal plan when I go to write it out. It tends to last us longer than those two weeks, but its a good base.

You decide how long you want yours to be. Maybe you want it only a week-long, but maybe you want it even longer than two weeks. Whichever you go with is great, it’s yours to do with what you wish.

Certain Days, Certain Types of Meals

Decide if you want certain days to be certain types of meals. It’ll make it easier when you are writing out your meal plan.

Like Monday’s for us are meatless. Tuesdays are usually something on the Mexican side. Wednesdays tend to be some kind of fish. While Wednesday through Fridays we try to do something fairly easy or in the slow cooker since Jason has soccer those nights.

If you decide what you want on those days, it makes it so much easier to pick a meal for that day of the week.

I think that is a good base to start off with, I decide that this would be a regular segment on my Healthy Tuesday’s for a bit. I have lots of other tricks and ideas up my sleeve to make meal planning even easier and hopefully it’ll be useful to some of you!

Thanks Crystal – I am excited for the next few weeks on the rest of my meal planning ideas!

aprilaakre

great tips. I do meal planning also it saves me money and my sanity. Every Sunday I go through pinterest and look for recipes. I write up my menu for the week and the groceries I will need and then Monday I go grocery shopping for everything I need.

Thanks for the reminder to get back to meal planning! Since I had the baby I’ve pretty much been on survival mode, but now that I’m getting more sleep and my energy and sanity back, it’s time to get to it! I’ve never really had “theme” nights, we eat a ton of mexican food here, but I might try to incorporate some themes now, sounds fun!

Having things on certain nights just makes it so much easier when you go to write down the meals. Knowing what kind of thing you are looking for each day so you are not as overwhelmed.

Melissa M. Miller

I’m very whimsical when it comes to food, which results in a large grocery bill. Now that my beau has taken a new job (with a snag in the 2-week notice plan), we definitely need to meal plan. I love the idea of themed nights. We’ve kinda incorporated pizza and nachos into our weekends, but there will be a total schedule change. In fact, we’ll get to make WAY MORE meals together, so now is the perfect time to start meal-planning.

On another note, it’s 8:16 p.m. and because I’m so whimsical, dinner just started cooking a few minutes ago (because I forgot, then Travis forgot, then Nicholas forgot to take out the chicken). I know what I want to make, but I haven’t even pulled up the recipe I found the other day for it.

I have tried to do the theme nights, and it just doesn’t work out. I have too many cravings and random ideas for food to be boxed in like that, lol. But I do at least try to have a rough plan of the meals for the week. Thanks so much for linking up at Fitness Fridays!

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